International
Four military search planes were dispatched Thursday to determine whether two large objects bobbing in a remote part of the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Australia, are debris from the Malaysia Airlines flight that has been missing for 13 days with 239 people on board. But poor visibility in the area was hampering the search effort.
One of the objects spotted by satellite imagery was almost 80 feet in length; the other was 15 feet. There could be other objects in the area, a four-hour flight from Australia's southwestern coast, said John Young, manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's emergency response division.
"This is a lead, it's probably the best lead we have right now," Young said. He cautioned that the objects could be seaborne debris along a shipping route where containers can fall off cargo vessels, although the larger object is longer than a container.
Malaysian officials, meanwhile, said they are hopeful but cautious about the discovery, with Acting Minister of Transport Hishammuddin Hussein warning Thursday that the images may not be related to the aircraft.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott earlier told parliament about the debris and said he had spoken to the prime minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, about the latest developments.
An Australian air force AP-3C Orion plane and three more aircraft are taking part in the search effort, which also includes a New Zealand Air Force Orion and a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon, an advanced maritime surveillance plane.
A Norwegian ship reached the area where debris was spotted on Thursday, according to Reuters, and a Royal Australian Navy ship equipped to recover any objects was also en route, but was still "some days away."
China, whose citizens made up about two-thirds of the passengers on board the flight, said it was also sending ships to the area of the sighting, but it was not clear how long it would take for the vessels to reach the scene.
Young said the spotted objects "are relatively indistinct on the imagery ... but those who are experts indicate they are credible sightings. The indication to me is of objects that are a reasonable size and probably awash with water, moving up and down over the surface."
Military planes from Australia, the United States and New Zealand have been searching in a region over the southern Indian Ocean that was narrowed down from 232,000 square miles to 117,000 square miles.
Young said the depth of the ocean in the latest area, which is south from where the search had been focused since Monday, is “several thousand meters deep.”
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority released two images of the whitish objects floating on or just under the surface. The images were taken March 16, but Australian Air Commodore John McGarry said it took time to analyze them.
"The task of analyzing imagery is quite difficult, it requires drawing down frames and going through frame by frame. The moment this imagery was discovered to reveal a possible object that might indicate a debris field, we have passed the information from defense across to AMSA for their action," he said.
Other experts said it was most likely not pieces of Flight 370.
"The chances of it being debris from the airplane are probably small, and the chances of it being debris from other shipping are probably large," said Jason Middleton, an aviation professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
Middleton also said the ocean to the west and south of Perth where the objects were spotted is notoriously stormy.
Selamat Bin Omar, the father of a passenger on the missing plane, said he could only wait for the results of the search and accept that fate.
"We do not yet know for sure whether this is indeed MH370 or something else," he said. "We are still waiting for further notice from the Australian government."
The fate of Flight MH370 has baffled aviation experts for nearly two weeks.
Investigators believe that someone with detailed knowledge of both the Boeing 777-200ER and commercial aviation navigation switched off the plane's communications systems before diverting it thousands of miles off its scheduled course.
Exhaustive background checks of the passengers and crew aboard have not yielded anything that might explain why.
The hunt for the Boeing 777 has been punctuated by several false leads since it disappeared March 8 above the Gulf of Thailand. Oil slicks that were spotted did not contain jet fuel. A yellow object thought to be from the plane turned out to be a piece of sea trash. Chinese satellite images showed possible plane debris, but nothing was found.
But this is the first time that possible objects have been spotted since the search area was massively expanded into two corridors, one stretching from northern Thailand into Central Asia and the other from the Strait of Malacca down to southern reaches of the Indian Ocean.
Flight 370 disappeared March 8 on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation, but have said the evidence so far suggests the plane was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next.
Al Jazeera and wire services
.jpg)
Authorities investigate what information was erased from simulator found at home of missing plane’s pilot
Early possible clues and explanations, including oil slicks, wreckage and battery failure, haven't helped find the plane
Bayes' Theorem helped researchers locate Air France Flight 447's black box in 2011
Map-timeline shows what we know about when and where the missing Boeing 777 aircraft deviated from its route to Beijing
Error
Sorry, your comment was not saved due to a technical problem. Please try again later or using a different browser.